Boat Race Day

I judged a photographic exhibition today and the one thing that was clear was that there are now more entries that are purely digital than film derived. It also meant that there were more entries overall. This in turn meant that it took me longer than normal to write notes for each entry. On these notes I try to get the entrants to understand how to take better photos and better presentation. The quality of entries does seem to have improved over the years.
It was raining when I left the judging and so I just dashed into the churchyard and took 2 snaps. The first was of these new graves bright and cheery with spring flowers but also rather sad.
The second one was the rather curious pigeon permanently perched on a headstone. What is it trying to eat.

The window of this thatched cottage is so thick I had to photograph it. This photo is a combination of two pictures. The camera focussed on the twigs in the foreground first. So I had to take another carefully focussing on the window frame. A slight vignette has been added.


Fiona will recognise this Magnolia flower. They are now at their peak. I liked the background here. Generally magnolia flowers are on their own and so the background can be distracting.


Even here we have graffiti as seen here. I was struck by the areas of light and shade forming a design in itself.

And here are some stalactites in the middle of Harnham! They hang from some old garage roofs. Tony should know these.

Ducking and Swanning About

Twobird pictures today. Ducks and swans. Both kaleidoscoped.

I thought it would be a good idea to get out early today because the weather forecast was for rain later. I also thought I would take a few long lens abstract images. For this purpose I went round the local church and these are the images I found. All are uncropped but various filters have been applied.
1. The first one has had the Buzz filter with the Watercolour setting applied and then faded by using Overlay mode.

2. The second one is of the tool shed with Flaming Pear Pixel Trash filter in the West mode.

3. Finally a photo of the east wall with a cross in the foreground and with the Flaming Pear Flood filter applied. Again one of the many modes was used so that the water is slightly transparent was employed.

A day of catching up. The morning was spent gardening - mainly pruning.
Then a quick trip out to take some photos. Met Maggie and Fiona. Managed to persuade Maggie to pose. I removed some graffiti from the wall.

In the churchyard I thought that the 2 gravestones were picturesque with their fresh daffodils.

Easter Monday 24th March

On this day we went for a 5 mile walk with the Chiselbury Grove Strollers. This is a picture of the doomed Post Office at Whitsbury.
During our walk we came to a paddock with several foals and mares. We were informed that each foal was worth in the region of £200,000 each! Here I have made a posterized monochrome image with 4 tones.
To see lots more photos of this walk go HERE

Snow this morning and so I tried to capture it falling. I tried first straight and then I added flash. This had the effect of lighting the flakes near to the camera. In some cases they were so big and bright that it looked like a fault. These are untainted pictures.

Later in the day the weather changed so that we had lovely clouds and plenty of sun. Below is a photograph that was put through the kaleidoscope filter of a fence across the river Bourne [normally this river is dry here i.e. Newton Toney]. The water is the blue bits.